Category Archives: Politricks

Bajadock: Geezo, Can’t enjoy a beer watching the sun set from the beach? Will be interested to observe how strictly this will be enforced. Soon, Baja California is going to have as many laws and regulations as Alta California. Remove alcohol, insert poop.

The mayor, Marco Antonio Novelo Osuna said that he has already issued instructions “to prevent alcoholic beverages from being disturbed and to avoid disturbing public order” in the area of ​​Playa Hermosa.

At the same time, it was reported that because the latest measurements of enterococci conducted in the area of ​​Playa Conalep, they showed favorable results and within the established in the norm, the precautionary closure decreed last Saturday was lifted.

César Cueñas Ceseña, head of the Department of Urban Management, Ecology and Environment and spokesperson of the Clean Beaches Committee, reported that the last sampling carried out by sanitary authorities gave 10 enterococos per 100 milliliters of water.

“The samples that were made on this beach are within the ranges established by the norm in the matter, which means that they are suitable for recreational use of bathers,” he said.

Cesar Cuevas, specified that, at this time, all the beaches that are located in the city of Ensenada, are open and can be enjoyed by the local population as well as domestic and foreign visitors.

The head of Civil Protection, Jaime Nieto de María y Campos, indicated that once the results were known, the red flags were lifted on Conalep Beach and two kilometers south that had been closed as a precautionary measure.

Monitoring results in Ensenada Beaches:

Monalisa Beach 31nmp / 100 ml

Pacifica Beach 30nmp / 100 ml

Playa Conalep I 10 nmp / 100 ml

Playa Conalep II 10 nmp / 100 ml

Playa Hermosa 20 nmp / 100 ml

Walks the mayor, esplanadeThe municipal president, according to press release, visited the esplanade of Playa Hermosa, accompanied by staff of the Public Services and Infrastructure Department, as well as the Municipal Public Security Bureau

He said that during the visit, people who exercise every morning in this area, where I expressed their concerns to have a better space.

Marco Novelo said that “this area must be a space worthy for the ensenadenses and national and foreign visitors, where the families can have moments of healthy recreation”.

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Bajadock: News articles have been discussing funding for the repair of “Tramo de Muerte” stretch from Chapultepec to Maneadero past few weeks. Here is hoping that discussion and planning move toward action. Every time I’m driving in this area, my senses are on high alert for sudden lane changers, sudden entry/exit and other craziness. Careful out there.

With the approval of the Expenditure Budget of the State for the current year, it was possible that additional resources received by the Sidu, are intended for maintenance of roads and highways of Ensenada, and the so – called “Section of Death” will be priority , said deputy Alejandro Arregui Ibarra.

The legislator, he said that since the State Congress, the head of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Urban State Development (Sidu), Manuel Guevara Morales was asked for the application of the appeal is resolved understood the problem of road section between former ejido Chapultepec- Maneadero.

FATAL BALANCES
the first baseman lamented that the poor conditions of the “tranche of Death” have been factor so that only between 2013 and 2017, have registered 192 accidents with a balance of 27 deaths and 111 injured.

Material damage claims, he said, were estimated at around 3.4 million.

Arregui Ibarra emphasized the social and economic implications, since the products of the south zone have to travel the route every day, risking life and work of thousands of people.

“Those who live in rural areas, about 150 thousand people rightly are desperate, it is not guaranteed that the underlying problem is resolved, the road section is the only access they have to the urban area of Ensenada , ” he added. At the same time, he acknowledged the work done by the City of Ensenada with the installation of the special commission for the revision of this road stretch and the call to action.

URGES CONVENIR
in addition, to provide legal certainty regarding competition of the highway, conservation, reconstruction and expansion required, Alejandro Arregui called upon the signing of an agreement which has as its purpose the improvement of roads.

That is, an agreement between mayor Marco Antonio Novelo Osuna and director of the Secretariat Communications and Transport, in Baja California, Alfonso Pesqueira Padrés to carry out an agreement.

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Mark Hainds put the toes of his hiking boots into the Pacific Ocean Thursday with the U.S.-Mexico border just off to his left — where it has been during his entire 700-mile journey.

“I dunno,” Hainds said, his clothes covered in dust and his face well-tanned and garnished with a scruffy beard. “It’s a weird thing. I should be feeling celebratory, but I haven’t figured it out.”

Since December, Hainds has hiked in two-week clips from El Paso, Texas, to Friendship Park at the southwestern edge of San Diego County. It was the culmination of a trip he started three years ago, also from El Paso, but headed east, along the Rio Grande to Brownsville, Texas, where the river flows into the Gulf of Mexico. He finished the first leg on Dec. 21, 2014, and started the second jaunt exactly two years later.

He’s one of the few people to hike the United States’ border with Mexico, and between the two legs of his trip, the views of that geopolitical boundary have shifted dramatically and promise to change the relationship between the two countries. On the campaign trail and now as president, Donald Trump pledged to build a wall along the border to prevent unauthorized immigration, hire 5,000 border patrol officers, and cancel or dramatically change the North American Free Trade Agreement, a deal that made it easier for cross-border business.

Hainds, who is 48 and from Alabama, said the change in politics was apparent when he talked to people along the way, many of them strangers who gave him food, took him in and gave him a place to rest for the night and tend to his feet.

“I guess the big thing was that nobody was talking too much about Trump, and nobody was talking about a wall in 2014,” he said. “And now, I think people have cordoned off more into camps. And still, the majority of people I meet are still against the wall, and further militarization of the border.”

Regardless of the thoughts of the people Hainds met as he hiked, for many miles of the trip, through all sorts of terrain and vegetation, was a wall. While the president has pledged to erect an extended partition between the United States and Mexico, for decades there has been some sort of barrier along portions of the border.

Hainds walked into Friendship Park with his wife and two children, who supported him along portions of the hike. As they reflected on the journey’s terminus, on the other side of a tall brown fence that extends into the Pacific, sunbathers sprawled out on a Tijuana beach as others played in the surf with their dog. All the while a Customs and Border Patrol officer sitting in an SUV kept watch from a nearby hill.

This might be the last of Hainds’ big adventures.

“Momma says no,” he said.

Momma is Katia Cabides, his wife. She and their two young children helped start him off in the mornings during parts of the trip, and met him when he was done for the day.

“I’m ready go back home,” Katia Cabides said. It was hard to be apart while he was on the trail, and she worried about her husband’s safety and health but was happy that he was doing something he thought was important. Still, it was difficult, she said.

“For me, I have to learn do to things by myself,” she said. “And suddenly, I was alone. What if something happened to him? Then I’m going to be a single mother.”

And then she pointed to her belly — they have a third child on the way.

“Now, I’m happy. I’m finally finished and we can go home,” she said.

Hainds has two books in the works — the first is about his walk that ended in 2014 and is currently with his publisher. The second, which will be based on his latest hike, will be about the people he encountered along the border, their lives and their stories living at the edge of the country. He kept a journal along the way.

“I think they feel ignored by the rest of the country, that they’re overlooked. I’m going to give them a voice,” he said.

They feel like they are misunderstood, and that a lot of the country incorrectly believes that they live in a war zone, he said. Parts of the border, particularly near big cities, seemed better off than many other parts of the country.

“I’ve walked through these big cities, and I feel much safer than I do in some of the Midwest,” he said.

He started the trip for a simple reason: to get away from the daily grind. He had had enough of his routine as a college forestry professor and working at a nonprofit organization, and all the emails, phone calls and text messages he was getting. He still works but planned his trip around his professional obligations.

“I just kind of reached a breaking point where I couldn’t stick with it any longer,” he said.

Sometimes that will encourage people to start a new career, or pick up a new hobby. When Hainds got that feeling, he retreated to the wilds of the Amazon, or the Pantanal in Brazil. But this time when the urge struck, he was reading Cormac McCarthy, a novelist whose stories are often set in west Texas.

“I think that inspired my imagination,” he said. “Another part — might sound kind of silly — I was kind of overwhelmed with people, with all these emails and faxes. And I looked at cell phone coverage in west Texas, and it was one of the biggest holes in the United States. They can’t get me there.”

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A decree issued by Mexican President Enrique PeñaNieto today confirmed that Mexico has legalized cannabis for medicinal use after overwhelming support from Mexico’s Lower House of Congress.

Peña Nieto was once a vehement opponent of cannabis legalization, but has since called for a re-examination of global drug policy after a nationwide public debate on legalization in early 2016. “So far, the solutions [to control drugs and crime] implemented by the international community have been frankly insufficient,” PeñaNieto told the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions in April 2016. “We must move beyond prohibition to effective prevention.”

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto

Last year, Peña Nieto even went so far as to introduce a measure that would allow Mexican citizens to possess up to an ounce of cannabis without repercussions, but the bill stalled in Congress.

The medical marijuana bill sailed through the Senate with ease in December 2016, and Mexico’s lower house in parliament passed the bill in April with a vote of 347-7 in favor of approval. Mexico’s Secretary of Health, Dr. José Narro Robles, voiced his support for the measure, saying, “I welcome the approval of the therapeutic use of cannabis in Mexico.”

The decree was issued by the president today and specifies that the Ministry of Health will be tasked with drafting and implementing the regulations of “public policies regulating the medicinal use of pharmacological derivatives of cannabis sativa, indica and Americana or marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol, its isomers and stereochemical variants, as well as how to regulate the research and national production of them.”

Peña Nieto’s decree effectively eliminates the criminalization of the medicinal use of cannabis, THC, CBD, and all cannabis derivatives, as well as legalizing the production and distribution of cannabis for medicinal and therapeutic uses.

“The ruling eliminates the prohibition and criminalization of acts related to the medicinal use of marijuana and its scientific research, and those relating to the production and distribution of the plant for these purposes,” stated the Lower House of Parliament, known as La Cámara de Diputados.

Currently, the only cannabis that will be permitted must contain 1% or less of tetrahydrocannabinol, and the Ministry of Health will be required to study the medicinal and therapeutic effects of cannabis before creating the framework for a medical marijuana program infrastructure.

There will certainly still be hurdles to overcome on the bumpy road to medical marijuana, but Mexico just surpassed the biggest obstacle so far.

Video from Mexico News Daily: government drone shows at least 148 trucks are seen lined up on a road waiting for hours to enter a large fuel supply depot operated by pipeline thieves near the Puebla-Orizaba highway in February.

Foreign companies looking to supply gasoline to Mexico are taking a hard look at planned investments after a series of fuel thefts escalated into a bloodbath last week in the state of Puebla.

A gun battle May 3 between soldiers and huachicoleros, the local nickname for fuel thieves, left 11 people dead and many more injured and triggered protests in Puebla, where pipelines are often tapped to steal gasoline. Companies looking to import fuel into Mexico from the U.S. like Howard Energy Partners, and BioUrja Trading LLC, are concerned about the uptick of the problem.

Soldiers stand in front of the flames generated by a fire in a clandestine fuel valve May 7.

Photographer: Jose Castanares/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s part of a worrisome trend that investors will take a look at and price into the offers that they make and the amount of investment that they decide to put into Mexico,” John Padilla, managing director of energy-consulting firm IPD Latin America, said by phone from Bogota.

Mexican fuel thefts have escalated in the past year, as the government abolished subsidies. The policy known as “gasolinazo,” or fuel-price slam, pushed up pump prices by as much as 20 percent in early 2017 and led to riots and blockades at some fuel terminals. Petroleos Mexicanos has covered the cost associated with the thefts, but it’s unclear whether the state oil company will try to pass them on to private importers in the future.

“Fuel theft is a significant concern for many companies going into Mexico and we don’t know that the government is doing anything in order to help alleviate that risk,” Rajan Vig, BioUrja’s head of Origination for Mexico, said by phone from Houston. BioUrja is seeking to import fuel into Mexico and is in talks with the government and banks to address the fuel-theft issue, but “we need the government to be on our side,” he said.

Illegal taps surged last year, resulting in losses of 2.2 billion of liters, or approximately 581.2 million gallons of fuel, a 24 percent increase from 2015. Disabling fuel pipeline taps cost Pemex around $220 million in the past six years, an amount that has risen more than 10-fold over the period, Mexican newspaper Milenio reported Monday, citing Pemex data.

“It’s a very large concern of ours,” Mike Howard, chief executive officer of Howard Energy, which is building a refined-product pipeline complex in northern Mexico, said by phone from San Antonio. “We’ve looked at all kinds of security measures including drones, above-ground cameras, everything that you can imagine to protect the product.”

The company is also investing in advanced leak-detection technology and considering burying its pipelines deeper in some locations. Huachicoleros typically dig up Pemex pipelines with a shovel because they are buried close to the surface.

“It’s an ongoing conversation that we’re having with our customers and with stakeholders in Mexico,” Howard said.

One of the murkier issues for the burgeoning private-fuel-import sector is who will cover the cost of product stolen from pipelines or terminals leased by Pemex. Tesoro Corp., which operates seven refineries in the U.S., won the first auction for capacity on Pemex’s pipelines and storage facilities on May 2. Commodity traders such as Trafigura Beheer BV and Koch Supply & Trading LP have applied for fuel-import permits.

Gasoline robberies are “a loss that Pemex just seems to absorb, and you can’t really expect the private sector to do that,” Robert Campbell, head of oil products research at industry consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. said by phone from New York. “Mexico’s justice system does not exactly inspire confidence. These are the sort of issues that really need to be worked out.”

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Pemex is reinforcing its efforts to combat fuel theft, including tracking down black markets where the fuel is sold and increasing surveillance on its pipelines, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya, Pemex’s chief executive officer said in a May 4 interview with Bloomberg. Gonzalez Anaya went to Colombia last year to learn new approaches to fight the crime from Ecopetrol SA, Colombia’s state oil producer that has grappled with frequent guerrilla attacks on its pipeline system.

“We are working on different fronts,” Gonzalez Anaya said. “It involves a lot of people, a lot of agencies. There’s not a silver bullet for this problem.”

Homicide investigations in Baja California are not very effective and business leaders’ concerns over worsening violence are justified, state and municipal authorities admitted yesterday.

Attorney General Perla del Socorro Ibarra told a conference in Tijuana that her staff are working 24 hours a day, but in percentage terms the effectiveness of their efforts “is not high” because of the high number of cases.

There have been more than 500 homicides in Tijuana so far this year.

The violence prompted business leaders to issue an SOS on Monday. The president of a citizens’ council on state security warned at a press conference that Baja California “is becoming a lawless state.”

“This,” said Juan Manuel Hernández Niebla, “is an SOS.”

Another business leader called for a single-command police force coordinated by the Army that would be capable of “attacking the organized crime structure.”

Kurt Honold Morales said there is no sign of effectiveness in the actions by security forces.

Also at yesterday’s conference, a forum on addictions and security at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Tijuana’s Public Security Secretary commented that authorities must listen to the complaints.

Marco Antonio Sotomayor agreed that they are justified. He said the municipality has “a very clear strategy, and one that has been strengthened, but it is also true that we have not achieved the results we wanted.”

Containing the violence was one of the desired results but that, he said, has not been accomplished.

Sotomayor observed that there have been successes operationally speaking, citing the seizure last weekend of 15 firearms.

Alarm to industrial wave of violence

General information

Ensenada BC – Wednesday, May 17, 2017 –by AFN.

ENSENADA BC, MAY 17, 2017 (AFN) .- Jorge Eduardo Cortés Ríos, president of the National Chamber of the Transformation Industry of Ensenada (Canacintra), called on the authorities of the three orders of government to establish a strategy Effective way to stop the wave of violence in the Entity.

The president of Canacintra reported that in addition to the killings, there are cases of extortion, express kidnappings, business robbery, vehicle theft, land collection, many of them not reported by the victims due to fear or lack of results.

He urged that concrete measures be taken, with targets and defined dates, coordinated by security corporations, that the Police Operations Center (COP) cameras be repaired and that they join the Communication and Command Center (C4).

“It is also urgent that the contracting, training, equipment and control of the municipal police be strengthened, that the failures of the New Criminal Justice System that favor impunity, that the crimes be clarified and punish the criminals be corrected.

In an event that he described as unprecedented for Ensenada, he said, “we are returning to levels of violence that we believed had already been overcome, requiring real and effective coordination between federal, state and municipal police corporations with the armed forces. Leave to these all the responsibility “.

“The perception of insecurity, unfortunately justified by the figures, places a high risk on investment and tourism, one of the few sectors that have maintained some economic dynamism in recent years and could inhibit some projects in this area, which Would be disastrous for the economy, “said Cortes Ríos.

The industrialist insisted on the urgency of stopping the criminal wave, investigating and punishing those responsible, to prevent other countries from continuing to issue alerts to stop their citizens from traveling to Mexican states and cities with high levels of violence.

He recalled that since mid-2016, there are restrictions on the part of the United States Department of State so that Americans do not travel to destinations like Baja California and the municipality of Ensenada.Added that just this April 22 the United Kingdom also issued a recommendation to its citizens, a situation that inhibits the arrival of visitors from that country to the region, insisted the leader.

To date, 58 people are reported killed in the municipality;Which has caused alarm in the industrial sector of Ensenada by the large number of victims, but also by the negative effects that it may have on the economy of the already repressed region.

He indicated that according to information collected, 30 crimes have been committed in the southern part of the municipality, 28 in the urban spot, in the conurbation zone and in the Valle de Guadalupe, so far in 2017;Which he said far exceeded the total number of homicides committed throughout 2016, he said.

Cortes Ríos stated that the most worrying of all is the upward trend, since only in the last week have been registered at least three murders in the northern rural area;Another alarming figure is the number of women who died violently, who already number 12, a situation that generates even greater uncertainty among the population.

In order for the city to progress, it requires investments, that existing companies can operate without surprises, that there are more jobs, generate taxes;But for that, a climate of tranquility free of violence is required, “said Jorge Eduardo Cortés Ríos.

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Bajadock: We posted above photo attached to December 2016 article on police checking seatbelt compliance and warning drivers of cell phone use while driving. This is the proverbial rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, per the following:

Faced with increasing levels of insecurity, impunity and corruption in Baja California, the Citizen’s Council of Public Security and Coparmex, demanded strong and effective actions by the federal, state and municipal governments to fight criminals.

In a press conference, Juan Manuel Hernández Niebla, president of the Public Citizen’s Council of Public Security, Faisal Díaz Nassif, president of the Citizen Committee of Public Security, and Coparmex leaders, Armando León Ptacnik and Jorge Nava Jiménez, demanded that officials comply With their responsibilities.

In Baja California, all crimes go up month by month, Hernández Niebla said, and the culture of non-reporting also increases in the face of the authority’s lack of capacity to investigate and punish.

The lack of crime prevention programs is increasing intrafamily violence and addictions, making Baja California youth a conducive breeding ground for crime, and a prison system that is also in crisis, said the president Of the Public Security Council.

It seems, he said, that the citizens should be abandoned, before an insensible authority, without strategy that minimizes a situation that is becoming critical.Baja California appears to be a day-to-day entity without a law, Hernández Niebla emphasized.

Therefore, we asked the Governor Francisco Vega to shortly authorize the project to implement the new Criminal Justice System, allocate more resources to the State Attorney General’s Office, to have more trained personnel, and to improve The efficiency of the inquiries and using state-of-the-art technology.

It also requires that both the State Government and municipal governments submit a strategic public safety program in three months, with concrete and time-bound targets and results based on indicators that allow them to evaluate their actions and performance.

We want, said Hernández Niebla, that the governors, governor and mayors, assume their responsibility to provide security to the Baja California.

The Lower House has approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes, in a historic vote that would also allow the regulated study of the cannabis sativa plant.

With 301 votes in favor and 88 against, the Representatives approved the initiative of President Enrique Peña Nieto, which was sent to Congress on April 21, 2016, but without the provision to legalize the marijuana for recreational uses with which he came.

Members of the National Action Party (PAN) managed to clear nine articles of the initiative, to ensure its approval. However, the new article 198 of the Federal Criminal Code now says:

“The planting, cultivation or harvesting of marijuana plants shall not be punishable when these activities are carried out for medical and scientific purposes in the terms and conditions of the authorization issued for that purpose by the Federal Executive.”

It gives new power to the Ministry of Health to “design and implement public policies that regulate the medicinal use of pharmacological derivatives of cannabis sativa, or American marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) with its isomers and stereochemical variants, as well as the regulation of the research and national production of it, ” this according to El Financiero.

Does it mean that you can already cross medical marijuana from San Diego to Tijuana?

Not necessarily, because information about when this law goes into effect or whether it is permitted to import medical marijuana from other countries, such as the United States, is missing. But it does make clear that this change “eliminates the prohibition and criminalization of acts related to the medicinal use of marijuana and its scientific research, and those that concern the production and distribution of the plant for these purposes.”

It is still illegal to cultivate, negotiate or distribute marijuana for recreational use, but it should be remembered that if a citizen has less than 5g in his or her position, there is no penalty or cause for arrest. Now less if it is for medicinal use; any amount.